- Greetings, greetings today!
- Hello!
- Oh, sorry, Bob.
Today, we're gonna talk about common elbow pain
like,
tennis elbow, golfers elbow. - Tennis elbow, golfers elbow!
That's the common name,
you can call 'em
Medial or Lateral Epicondylitis.
A technical name.
- Or we can swear at 'em.
- Or what?
- Swear at 'em!
- Swim!
- Swear at 'em.
- Swear at 'em!
- Curse, yeah!
Anyways, we're gonna show you some at home treatments.
There's three easy ones that work very well.
You can do 'em simply and you've got 9.3 seconds.
We'll get right at it,
Thank you very much.
♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous physical therapists. ♪
♪ On the internet. ♪
- Okay, once you realize you have one
of these terrible elbow pains,
- That's bad.
- Yeah! It's not gonna tear you apart
but it's gonna change how you function
with your life, - Right.
- Depending on what you do.
Let's say we have elbow- tennis elbow here.
It doesn't matter.
First of all, avoid activities that irritate it,
- Right.
- You'll know because it's gonna make you say,
Ow, boy! That hurt!
Like opening a doorknob or some activity.
- Lifting a tray.
- Yep, exactly.
Then also use NSAIDs, if that works for you.
Ibuprofen, Advil, whatever.
- An anti-inflammatory.
- Yep, exactly.
And a cold pack can work wonders at the end
of the day or whenever.
Get a cold pack on there.
- That's a Bob red pack!
- It is! - Cold pack.
- Yeah! We've got a-
- It comes with a strap.
- Yep. These are real nice.
They're they're soft on one side.
They do not freeze hard, which is a, you know-
- Right!
- We would not recommend one
that's not of top quality. - High quality!
- That's right
You can also take a cup and freeze it.
3/4ths full of water,
a paper or styrofoam cup
tear apart the top and then go direct ice on
that for five minutes. - Right.
That's a little more aggressive.
And that you have to kind of be ready for
- It's fast though.
- Yeah, it is.
Alright! Now, we're gonna go onto the treatments.
Hold on.
Alright, the first one we're going to do,
what's known as a strained counter strain technique.
And what we're gonna do, Bob is gonna do the golfers
- Golfers.
- If you have pain-
- Right
- on the inside.
And if it's out here, the tennis elbow,
I will demonstrate that. They're almost identical.
You just change the direction of the hand,
- Right.
- For tennis elbow,
It hurts back here.
You're gonna bring your hand and wrist back that direction.
Towards it, towards the-
- You put on slack.
- Yes, exactly.
- Muscles.
- Yep.
But you do flex your arm.
Notice we have pillows
because you wanna completely relax the arms.
- Be comfortable.
- Yep. And the shoulder,
doing this on a recliner with some pillows is ideal.
- Sure.
- Or lying down and a bed works very well too.
You can find that tender spot,
push on it and say, ow, well that hurts right there.
So, that's kind of a getting your benchmark pain level.
So you say, oh, that hurts at about an eight over 10.
Then we're gonna flex,
extend.
If it's golfers, you're going to flex the elbow
and flex the rest
- Down this this way.
- And this is done in a quiet, relaxed atmosphere.
You're not gonna do with TV
on or kids running around that type of thing.
- And then you add rotation.
- Yes. Yep.
And you know,
only you know where it is. - Right.
You're not gonna have a therapist
- Cause it'll feel better.
- Yes.
So I've done this a number
of times with tennis elbows successfully.
And you'll, you're rotated this way or that way.
Whichever way the pain drops down.
You should be able to get it down like to one or even zero.
- Right.
- And then this is the hardest part
about the whole technique is once you find the comfort spot,
be very relaxed and you do have to time it.
You have to go minimum of 90 seconds and holding
- Which is a minute and a half.
- Yes.
- Or up to two minutes, right?
- Yeah.
90 seconds to 120 seconds.
And it has to be at least 90
or it will not be effective according to the research.
- Oh, Brad, I have to be honest.
I was a skeptic of this - Yeah.
technique, but it works.
- Yeah. I was the same way and I was grateful for it.
And then once you're done holding it,
you do not go to an aggressive activity.
You actually, you're gonna straighten things out
- Ease out of it.
- Yep. Slowly kinda work things around slowly.
And then you're gonna go back to that painful spot.
And then you're gonna reassess how tender it is,
Now, I was at an eight.
Now, I've done this real life,
I've worked with patients with this.
It's not uncommon to go from an eight
when you're touching it down to a one or a two.
- Sure.
- And you know, you did very well then.
- You can massage the muscles around
- And how often a day?
- Two or three times a day.
- Sure.
- And as it gets better,
you'll notice that you'll just do it less
and you won't even think about it as much.
- Right.
- And you can continue with cold packs and
ibuprofen as you feel.
But it's a really good technique.
I think it, you know, that's why I put it on number one.
- Right.
- Let's go to number two, Bob.
- Very good.
- Alright, this next technique is kinda like massaging it
but it's called the Graston technique.
Don't worry about that,
but you can just take a butter knife.
We're going to use the handle of the knife,
not the sharp
- Not the blade.
- Yeah. And not that a butter knife is sharp,
but we're not going to use that.
Now here we have,
It doesn't matter if you have tennis elbow,
if it's on inside or outside,
the technique's the same
except for you do it in the area of pain.
So, this mark is the tender spot.
So, if this was Bob with tennis elbow and I-
- [Bob] Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!
- [Brad] Yeah, he would go, ow, ow, ow,
And I'd say be quiet, you wimp!
No, I wouldn't do that.
I'd say now, Bob, this is what we're gonna do.
We're gonna take some lubricant.
It can be any kind of moisturizing cream,
we're using actually-
- Cowabunga cream!
- Cowabunga.
So actually this-
Actually helps with pain as well.
- Right
But anything to lubricate it.
You can put that on there and use it liberally.
Don't be too-
There you go, Bob's gonna rub it around.
And that's just for lubrication.
As Bob starts to do the,
I'll call it scraping, if you will.
Are you ready, Bob?
- [Bob] Yep. Using the handle,
- [Brad] Yep.
- [Bob] I'm gonna shovel
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] Not rake.
- [Brad] Right, So he's referring to the angle of the
- [Bob] Of the blade
- [Brad] Of the butter-
- [Bob] Not the blade, the handle.
- [Brad] The handle, Yep.
They-
You can buy Graston tools online.
They cost 10, $20.
They work a little better than a butter knife,
but I've used these and I've had good luck with them.
- [Bob] Right.
- [Brad] So it's up to you on that point,
but you're going to do this for two to three minutes.
It takes a while.
And what you're gonna notice is,
you're not gonna go up into the painful area.
Gonna go just below, the muscles go this way.
So that's why Bob's going away.
He's not gonna take it up towards his shoulder
- [Bob] And they could get, uh, red in the skin.
- [Brad] Yes. And that's okay.
You can, once your skin starts to turn red, you know
you're getting more blood flow.
The muscles is relaxed from the massage aspect
of it and then you'll stop.
And then you'll take and simply wipe off the
excess, like that.
and that.
And you could do this daily.
- Sure.
- Make sure after the first time you do it though,
you wait 24 hours just to see
- How we react
- Sometimes people overdo it and they get bruising.
- Right.
- That's okay, it should go away.
If it doesn't go away, then you shouldn't continue to do it.
- Right.
- That means you just, give it some time.
And it's just some Ecchymosis old blood that will,
your body will absorb.
So, that's our second one.
We're gonna go onto our third option.
Okay. Here we go, number three.
This, there's two options to do this.
This is a cross friction massage.
We've been talking about this for years.
Bob is gonna show the manual way to do it.
- Okay. You could go finger by finger,
or finger on top of finger.
- Yeah.
- So you, again, you're not gonna hit right on the spot.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] It's too tender.
So, I'm gonna go a little bit off the spot
and I'm gonna go across the fibers.
- [Brad] Yes.
- [Bob] Like this and I'm gonna rub pretty strongly.
- [Brad] Yep. Getting into that muscle
- [Bob] Right.
Arm relaxed.
- [Brad] I actually do mine with three fingers
and that's up two, two fingers.
- [Bob] Do one.
- [Brad] What?
Yeah. I don't know.
I just feel,
I feel better that way for whatever reason, but yeah.
- [Bob] Okay. Working my way down.
- [Brad] How long you gonna do this, Bob?
- [Bob] Well, you, how would-
you could go up to five minutes.
- Yeah.
- If you can tolerate it.
- Yeah. Cause your fingers are gonna be
- Right.
- tired.
- A problem, yeah.
- The weakest link.
- Yep.
- If it happens, you're doing this and after a minute
or so it just feels like it's getting more and more sore.
Then you should stop.
- Yeah.
- It should feel better after 30 seconds or so.
- Yep. Yep.
Should feel kind of numbish,
or just feels good then, you know, you're, you're doing okay
- The right thing.
- Or you're just being too aggressive.
- Right.
- What's the option, Brad?
- Well, if you don't want to wear your fingers out
and you happen to have a massage gun on this,
I highly recommend one with a round ball like this.
See that?
They come in and out very easily.
This gun happens to be the giveaway-
- Right.
This week's giveaway.
- There you go.
But you use whatever massage gun you have,
but the round head works good.
You're not gonna go straight in to this.
That's too aggressive.
You're gonna want to go sideways and get that same-
Cause you need a gun that reciprocates like this
- Across the fibers.
- Yep. Across the fibers.
And it's amazing how well you can control the intensity
by going sideways and working that.
- Poor Brad, doesn't get tired.
- Ah, oh, whoa!
There we go.
What happened was I got my skin in there.
I, I, I had it.
- Oh, sure.
- I didn't have the gun.
I didn't have-
- At the right angle.
- Yep. There was the wrong angle.
Figured it out very quickly.
- Now the thing about buying a gun,
you can use it anywhere.
- Absolutely. You can put it in your quadriceps,
your hamstrings, your calves.
Not your neck, though.
- Not neck or head.
- Yep.
They get that
- That chest
- That Pectoralis Major muscle.
Yeah. They're very much used all over the place.
- They're handy.
- Yeah, Handy.
Get it.
With your hand.
- Alright. Got it
- Alright, very good.
That's the three techniques, uh, you're gonna have success
with at least one of these
and probably the first one was I'd go to first.
- And peace and love to you.
- There you go.
Wow, Bob!
Maybe we'll do a sermon next.
- Ah, sounds good.